‘The Evil Dead’: why was the Sam Raimi cult classic postponed in the UK?
Before Sam Raimi was creating Marvel spectacles, he shocked and terrified audiences in the 1980s with his impressive directorial debut, The Evil Dead. This surreal, thrilling and gory horror was released in 1981, marking the genre’s transformation into a hyperactive and over-the-top approach that prioritised flashy visuals and outlandish yet creative concepts.
The Evil Dead features the brilliant cast of Bruce Campbell, Ellen Sandweiss, Richard DeManicor, Betsy Baker, and Theresa Tilly as five college students who head to an isolated cabin in the woods for a holiday. Exploring the cabin, they stumble across an audio tape and make the mistake of playing it. The tape releases a demonic spiritual evil that possesses four of the group, creating horrific and distorted caricatures that attack the others. A chaotic onrush of mayhem and carnage follows, throwing Campbell’s character, the pop culture icon Ash Williams, into a fight for his life.
Inspired by drive-in horror cinema, Raimi planned to shoot a proof of concept short film in order to attract financiers to his innovative project, eventually creating the short Within the Woods with a budget of just $1,600. The filmmaker eventually collected around $375,000 of a budget for his planned feature-length project, which the director cited working on as a “rite of passage”.
Raimi’s film oversaw a substantial promotional campaign, including eye-catching posters and chilling trailers, leading to an impressive box office performance that defied initial expectations. After earning $108,000 in its opening weekend, The Evil Dead was boosted by word-of-mouth reciting its unconventional approach and creepy plot, eventually becoming a sleeper hit through a domestic gross of over $2million.
Reflecting on the cult classic as part of the 40th anniversary, Campbell cited the production and filming experience during an interview with The Columbus Dispatch, describing it as “low-budget, it’s got rough edges.” Still, even so, “there are parts of that movie that are visually stunning,” he added.
However, Raimi’s explosive execution, emphasis on gore and overall unsettling themes generated controversy, as expected, since the director worked on the movie without consideration of censorship. Shocking visuals of pencils in heels and hands being chewed clean off in spurts of blood branded The Evil Dead as a splatter feature. Offering minimal profoundness and no compelling interpretation, the film was labelled a gore-filled, shock value-driven mess similar to I Spit on Your Grave and Cannibal Holocaust.
With such harsh and extreme citations stemming from its carnage and depictions of violence, it is no surprise that The Evil Dead fell victim to censorship laws and a ‘video nasty’ label, meaning low-budget exploitation horror films that audiences should miss for their own safety. From this, Raimi’s movie was postponed in release and underwent its runtime being cut down by 49 seconds to achieve an X certificate. After a decade, the film had another 66 seconds cut so it could be made appropriate for home video release, a helpful addition since it went on to make £100,000 in the first week of its release, becoming the bestselling UK video of that year and beating The Shining. In addition, the film is still banned in several other countries.
The first Evil Dead movie spawned two sequels, The Evil Dead Part II and Army of Darkness. Director Fede Álvarez expanded on Raimi’s excessive ’80s visuals in an updated recon titled Evil Dead, which was released in 2013 and will be followed by a sequel, Evil Dead Rise, set for release on April 21st, 2023. A spin-off series, Ash Vs Evil Dead, aired between 2015 and 2018 and narrated Ash Williams’ life 30 years after the original film as he fights against the evil entities once more.
Horror enthusiasts consider The Evil Dead a staple in cult filmmaking, a testimony to the success an independent horror flick can achieve. This was proven through how it utilised a low-budget and outlandish narrative to create one of horror’s most iconic and entertaining watches.
